


found myself an omen

by tomato_greens



Series: Listen, Listen - music ficlets [19]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, M/M, References to Canon-Typical Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-22
Updated: 2012-10-22
Packaged: 2017-11-16 19:54:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Charles picks up a gun, he’s six and only curious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	found myself an omen

**Author's Note:**

> So I have a tumblr now? [Here, come be friends with me!](http://tomato-greens.tumblr.com) I am not very good at tumblr but whateverrr. Anyway, I wrote this for [oooobrien](oooobrien.tumblr.com), who requested Charles and Erik and [Raise Hell](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDXvzhnG3V4) by Brandi Carlile.

The first time Charles picks up a gun, he’s six and only curious: he had seen the thing in its lockbox in the back of his mother’s mind, distracted, and he’d thought it beautiful in its obvious way, intricate, dangerous, beguiling. When he finds the box two weeks later at the back of his father’s closet (even then he liked to keep some things secret from himself, save himself surprises––because, he’s realized, no one else will), he’s overwhelmed by a violent fear and the smell of nervous sweat. He puts the gun down, gently, and, deliberately, forget it.

The second time Charles picks up a gun, he is thirteen. It’s also the first time he can tell where something’s been just by touching it, its memory-trace a trajectory he can see clear in his mind; he learns, years later, he is one of three psychics in the world powerful enough to do so untrained, but at the time it seems just lucky, the unlocking of a door he hadn’t known existed. 

The gun was last touched by Kurt, which Charles tries not to examine too closely: he doesn’t want to know why Kurt needed it, who he was trying to frighten; before that, the man Kurt bought it from, and before that, someone––furtive, not-quite-excited, young, maybe Charles’s age, breathing hard and caught between self-aggrandizing arousal and mind-numbing fear. It’s complicated, deeply so, and Charles finds himself short of breath, his blood hot in cheeks and between his legs.

“Charles!” he hears—Raven, needing him for something. Charles knows she’s older than she looks, maybe even older than he is, but he can’t help feeling responsible for her.

He puts the gun back, ashamed. _Self-control_ , he thinks, _there’s the key_. 

He doesn’t touch a gun again until Korea, at which point he stops keeping track.

(The last time he touches a gun is on a beach, minutes before everything falls apart. He vows, _never again_.)

-

The first time Charles touches Erik Lehnsherr, he’s twenty-eight and hauling Erik up out of some wine-dark sea, an impossible meeting, really, like something out of a film, but then, hasn’t Erik always considered himself exceptional? 

The second time Charles touches Erik, he’s still twenty-eight and exhausted, and he knows Erik is aching for—something, though what, precisely, he can’t name. It’s not as though he’s trying to get into Erik’s head, but Erik leaks, constantly, in maddeningly inconsistent drips, a phrase here, a plea there, stripped of context and meaning but not of pain. 

“I can help you,” Charles says, clutching at Erik’s sleeve, drunk on his presence and also, incidentally, at least two-thirds of a very fine bottle of whiskey because what use is money if you can’t have a little excess now and again?

But Erik just looks down at his hand and raises his eyebrows. Charles knows that he’s drunk too, though he won’t admit it. “I think I’m beyond that,” he says, sardonic and too-honest behind it; he pats Charles’s hand and extricates himself, fine bones and a private, scarlet fury. Charles is entranced, feels caught in the vinegar of Erik’s harsh tongue and the honey of his mind, a willing entrapment.

He doesn’t touch him again, not with intent, until the night before Cuba, when he lifts his arms in frustration and Erik catches them, sliding his fingers down the bones of Charles’s wrists until he can grab onto his hands. “Come to bed,” Erik says, caught between nervousness and a fearsome excitement, and Charles, eager, does.

(The last time Charles touches Erik, he’s twenty-nine––no, thirty-two––no, fifty––no, seventy––no; he’s not sure there will be a last time. They can’t seem to stay away even as they will never be together again.)


End file.
